Good Friday

"The assault upon the goodness of God is made from the barricades of the ordinary." Bishop Hays Rockwell, the now-retired Bishop of Missouri, wrote those words about the Passion story, the events of Jesus’ trial, crucifixion and death. The assault upon the goodness of God is made from the barricades of the ordinary.

Do you think of today as an ordinary day? Either in your own life this year, or in the life of the world some two thousand years ago? In some ways, of course, this day, this whole Holy Week are not ordinary. We would not be gathered here mid day for worship were this an entirely ordinary day. For most of us this entire week was been one extraordinarily full of worship with an unusually focused attention to God’s Word and God’s presence. And yet at the same time, these days have been full of the ordinary things of our lives, too.

Bishop Rockwell points out that even the events of Jesus’ passion, momentous as they turned out to be, can be viewed as a rather ordinary story. He describes the scenes of the passion as "despairingly ordinary." They portray "the brutality of men picking on one of their own kind." The soldiers are really no more than schoolyard bullies. There’s the "matter-of-fact little death march"… and it probably was quite little… a few stragglers walking along dusty streets. They arrive at the "usual place for executions." We see the "sadistic delight" and curiosity of "hangers-on and passers-by." Some everyday jeering and taunting. Sadly, in many ways this story is all too commonplace, all too ordinary.

It’s a story driven by familiar characteristics of human life: relatively minor pride, casual brutality, the reflex for revenge, the fear of truth. It is an ordinary story that could and does happen any place, any day.

"The assault upon the goodness of God is made from the barricades of the ordinary." We need to hear that reminder. And we need to be reminded that it is our assault. During the early days of this Holy Week, as we gathered in worship, I shared a litany of questions offered by Martin Smith (from his book Reconciliation: Preparing for Confession in the Episcopal Church), questions meant to challenge us to identify and own the sins of our ordinary, daily lives. These are the ways we have turned our backs on God, given up on God, or ignored God in our lives. These are our ordinary sins that account for Jesus’ presence on the cross. We are accountable. The ordinary sins of our ordinary lives crucified Jesus. The assault upon the goodness of God is made from the barricades of our ordinary lives.

But that is not the only message of this day. In fact, most of you probably don’t need to hear that message. Not because it isn’t important; it is. But because you already get it. You probably wouldn’t have come to church on Good Friday, of all days, if you did not already have some significant awareness of your sinfulness, your culpability for Jesus’ crucifixion. This is not a service of jubilant or self-satisfied celebration.

Yet there is another, a different message we all need to hear this day. A persistently hopeful one. Harder I think, sometimes to really internalize and accept. But immeasurably important. It is not too hard to accept that our ordinary sin, our daily failures of faith put Jesus on the cross. Yet it is equally true that our common goodness is why Jesus is on the cross. Jesus died (and rose again) to redeem our ordinary goodness. The holiness, the intrinsic blessedness that are apart of our common, everyday lives are worth saving, worth dying for. In the midst of our daily lives, God sees the good in us. And that’s why Jesus is on the cross. Not because we are bad, but because we are good.

God could have just walked away. And left us, as the old language says, to "die in our iniquity." But God sees more than the iniquity in us, vividly obvious as that is. God sees the worth in us. So God did not walk away from us.

We began this Lenten time of self-examination and repentance on Ash Wednesday with the Litany of Penitence. In it we voiced and claimed, at least in general terms, the sins of our own daily lives. That Litany concludes with an absolution of sin. The wording of that absolution is different from the familiar ones we hear on Sunday. The opening phrases are taken from Ezekiel… from the Hebrew Scriptures, Ezekiel 33:11. "Almighty God… who desires not the death of sinners, but rather that they may turn from their wickedness and live…"

God desires life for us. And God will do anything to give us that life. Because we are worth it. Think about some of those ordinary characters who were a part of the crucifixion. The soldiers. Mocking Jesus because they fear and do not understand, stealing his clothes like cowards after he is nailed to the cross. Fear and ignorance seem to often drive ordinary people to cruelty and hurt.

Or Herod and Pilate, blown to and fro by ambition and political expediency. Ambition is a powerful motivator in our ordinary lives, too, and it can gain us much. And propel us far from God. And what about Peter? All of us have a lot in common with Peter. Impetuous, misguided, betraying the Lord we love and need, all the while protesting our devotion.

Those were the people who literally had a hand in nailing Jesus to the cross. But ultimately Jesus died, not by their hands, but because God desired that they might live. God wanted the soldiers, and Pilate and Peter to have life and to have it abundantly. Their lives were worth redeeming. It’s not that God looked deep within the heart of every soldier and found in one a kind act done ten years ago, in another a sacrificial life of care for an aging parent, in another the future potential to be a great artist. It isn’t a matter of weighing our good deeds versus our bad that makes us worthy of God’s love. It isn’t our future potential that gives our lives meaning.

It’s just us. God loves us. The soldiers and Peter and all of us ordinary people. God just loves us and will do anything to free us from the sin that numbs and deadens our lives. Sin is not something we are punished for; it is something we are freed from. Yes, Jesus died because of our sins. He died so that our sins could not kill the holiness, the goodness, the blessedness, the divine glory that lives within us.

There’s a prayer that begins: "Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within your saving embrace…" Everyone. All of us ordinary people. "Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within your saving embrace…" That’s why we call this Good Friday.